India says it targeted Pakistan's air defenses, as conflict heats up

India says it targeted Pakistan's aerial defenses successful strikes connected Thursday, successful a motion of escalating unit betwixt the 2 nuclear-armed countries.

India's defence ministry said its forces had "targeted Air Defence Radars and systems astatine a fig of locations successful Pakistan."

"It has been reliably learnt that an Air Defence strategy astatine Lahore has been neutralised," the authorities said successful a statement.

This was the archetypal clip India acknowledged going aft Pakistani subject installations.

Targeting aerial defenses threatens to deepen the crisis, arsenic it removes defenses and clears the mode for further and deeper strikes.

India's connection doesn't item however the attacks were carried out.

Clashes betwixt the 2 countries person ramped up successful caller days, aft India carried retired subject strikes overnight connected Wednesday. It said these were successful retaliation for a violent onslaught that killed 26 radical successful the contested portion of Kashmir past month.

For its part, Pakistan claimed Thursday to person changeable down 25 Indian drones, including Israeli-made HAROP long-range drones that tin scout and onslaught targets.

The Jerusalem Post reported successful 2019 that India had bought respective batches of HAROP drones from Israel, including the acquisition of 10 drones successful a $100 cardinal deal.

"Debris of Israeli-made Harop drones is being recovered from assorted areas crossed Pakistan," the Pakistani subject said successful a statement.

India besides said successful the connection that it had neutralised Pakistani rocket and drone attacks connected its territory.

The usage of drones successful clashes betwixt India and Pakistan is simply a worrying caller improvement successful a long-simmering struggle implicit Kashmir, and points to the increasing power of warfare techniques and technologies utilized successful the warfare successful Ukraine.

Both countries person utilized drones for years for reconnaissance successful Kashmir, Christopher Clary, a prof astatine the University astatine Albany successful New York, told BI, but ne'er earlier "for evident attacks connected the other."

"It seems imaginable some Pakistan and India were probing force aerial defenses," helium said of the strikes.

Pakistan said that 31 radical person been killed successful Indian strikes since Wednesday, portion India says Pakistan's attacks person killed 16.

The speech of blows comes aft an onslaught by Pakistani militants connected Indian tourists successful Kashmir connected April 22, which killed 26 people. India has accused Pakistan of being down the attack, an accusation Pakistan denies.